WikiLeaks partners a motley crew on Syria

WikiLeaks has now teamed with a bankrupt Spanish publisher, a French web upstart and a newspaper accused of bias towards the Assad regime as media partners for the release of 2.4 million Syrian government emails.

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Forget storied newspapers like The New York Times and The Guardian. WikiLeaks has now teamed with a bankrupt Spanish publisher, a French web upstart and a newspaper accused of bias towards the Assad regime as media partners for the release of 2.4 million Syrian government emails.

US wire agency Associated Press was originally listed on the WikiLeaks website as one of seven “collaborators” on the so-called Syria Files, but this was swiftly removed yesterday following complaints from AP. The agency has had advance access to the files, but does not consider its relationship with the whistleblowing website to be a partnership.

This leaves WikiLeaks without an English language media partner for its biggest data dump since the release of US diplomatic cables of November 2010.

L’Espresso hit the ground running yesterday with its scoop that Italian defence technology group Finmeccanica sold sophisticated communications equipment to the Syrian police as recently as February.

Most of WikiLeaks’ current collaborators lack the high profile and reporting heft of the The Guardian, Le Monde,Der Spiegel or El Pais — the publications WikiLeaks teamed with to investigate the US diplomatic cables. The Guardian also shared its “cablegate” files with The New York Times.

This suggests there will be plenty of juicy stories for rival news outlets — and, indeed, citizen journalists — to uncover when WikiLeaks releases the full suite of emails. The Syria Files are estimated to be 10 times bigger than the “cablegate” data dump and includes tens of thousands of emails written in Arabic and Russian.

The most controversial of WikiLeaks’ current collaborators is Al Akhbar, which is widely seen as supportive of Lebanese militant group Hezbollah and Syrian president Bashar Al Assad’s regime. Journalist Max Blumenthal stopped writing for Al Akhbar last month, complaining that “the apologia for Assad and his crimes has reached unbearable levels”.

In a piece explaining the partnership, Al-Akhbar’s editor-in-chief Ibrahim al-Amin says the emails will help “to sort out what is real and what is fabricated”.

“One thing is obvious, though, the hypocrisy of global politics has reached a new high when dealing with Syria,” he said.

The choice of Spanish website publico.es is a curious one. Publisher Mediapubli closed down printed paper El Publico earlier this year after filing for bankruptcy. Before it was shuttered in February, the strident left-wing tabloid was the ninth-largest general-interest newspaper in Spain with a circulation of 87,000.

The Owni website was set up in 2009 as part of a grassroots movement hostile to the Hadopi law that attempted to regulate internet access in France. The site aggregates and translates content from blogs and websites, as well as running crowdsourcing and data journalism projects. During the recent French elections, the site ran a “fact-checking” project with the help of its readers on statements made by presidential candidates.

Germany’s ARD, which runs a national television network and more than 50 radio stations, is the world’s second-largest public broadcaster behind the BBC.

Egypt’s Al Masry Al Youm has been noted for its liberal tendencies and willingness to publish hard-hitting stories since it was launched in June 2004.

WikiLeaks has long a track record of developing fractious relationships with its media partners. Relations between WikiLeaks, The Guardian and The New York Times soured after both outlets launched stories highly critical of Julian Assange. WikiLeaks also did not approve of The Times‘ decision to allow the State Department to veto and censor WikiLeaks material.

In an interview with Crikey last year, WikiLeaks spokesperson Kristinn Hrafnsson said the storied papers should have been “more honourable” in their dealings with WikiLeaks.

“When they realised we wanted some control over how things were carried out, we saw rising animosity from them, which is rather strange,” Hrafnsson said. “We considered them media partners on an equal footing. The Guardian and TheNew York Times decided to see us as a source, primarily, and I’ve always thought that was odd because, in my opinion as a journalist, you have a duty to your sources and you have to respect and protect your source. They certainly weren’t doing that.”

It is very sad that the dinosaurs (Grauniad/NYT et al) chosen to participate in the first dump proved that, like their rels. in the Permian, their brains were too small for the lumbering bodies.
Their shrill cries were those who were dead but still moving when it was blatant that they were no longer “gatekeepers” – unless in the Miltonian sense of Sin who kept the key which was she willingly yielded to the Morning Star.
Go Assange, anywhere that is safe – I’d suggest Mt Kailash coz I’d trust ash haired, sky clothed sadhus before any government.

I also believe journalists should protect their sources, but what if those sources are already known and out there in public view?
Today News Ltd journalist, Steve Lewis, made it clear that he doesn’t want to reveal the communications he’s had regarding the Slipper affair. He says he shouldn’t have to comply with a subpoena issued by the Federal Court because he sees it as “too broad”, whatever that means. However, the biggest clanger was dropped by Ashby himself, who now want out and has asked to be excused from putting his case to the court, for fear he may incriminate himself. Incriminate himself?

While Governments the world over – including Western – become increasingly paranoid about the information available to citizens and implement various underhanded methods to ‘control’ and ‘regulate’ it, WikiLeaks remains a shining beacon in providing people with the raw truth. More power to them.

No english language partner – what a testament to the dominance and reach of elite power in the anglosphere. Of course, its not just the US & allied/client govs that want Wikileaks gone, plenty of v.rich people, via eg. Monsanto & Julius Baer, have been inconvenienced by WL too. Can’t you just smell the freedom?

As a citizen journalist, who has reported about Syria on Australian radio, and as someone who has spent far more time in Syria than any Western journalist, I am not a bit surprised or shocked by any business that ignores the Western-imposed sanctions. I am also happy to admit that I would not condemn a Western business that finds a way around the sanctions.

Anyone who spends more than 24 hours in Syria will discover that the Western portrayals of the crisis in Syria is neither accurate nor honourable. The sanctions are a tool of Western governments to pursue their own vested interest.

I can report from personal experience, the sanctions are making the ordinary Syrian suffer. Far from condemning businesses for ignoring the sanctions, subject to what the business is, I would argue there is justification to celebrate businesses that bring services and goods to the Syrian people who are simply pawns in the Western governments’ games to oust President Assad; motivated by nothing but Western-interest, with no regard or care in the Syrian people.